The Power of Your Voice

Published in Nova Healthwatch, Australia July 2007

by Teya Skae

“In the beginning was the word and word was Sound”

Did you know that the human voice is a mirror of our inner universe? Our voice reveals our moods, fears, intentions, hopes, tensions, thoughts, desires and reflects who we truly are. The sound of our voice can tell us more about a person than words can ever communicate.

According to Karina Schelde, a Danish born, professionally trained singer turned sound/voice therapist, our voice not only reflects our state of our mind, moods and our emotions but it is also an expression of our soul. Karina, an internationally acclaimed sound practitioner, lecturer and workshop leader since 1985 has been pioneering her knowledge of sound into her Voice and Sound Healing workshops. Her book entitled, Soul Voice is a practical and transformational resource that provides effective exercises based on her Soul Voice Method, which Karina teaches around the world, for promoting personal and spiritual development. The Soul Voice Method teaches us how to use our voice to heal and empower ourselves.

When we release suppressed emotions, which are stored in our bones, muscles, tissues and organs, we are in fact facilitating our self-healing. When we allow ourselves to sigh, cry, groan or moan we feel a sense of freedom because we are bypassing our control mechanism, our conscious mind that controls our speech and our voice.

All our issues first arise in our subconscious mind, which will always disrupt our energy flow as a result. When our energy flow is disrupted we experience feelings and tension. It is our feelings that influence our biochemical/molecular structures in our body, and when we find a way to release emotional blocks in the subconscious we naturally experience liberation and promote self-healing as a result. Using our voice allows us to directly access the powerful, stored, often suppressed, repressed and denied feelings in our body and energy field. How does this happen?

It happens naturally due to the fact that sound has a powerful ability to break through barriers, through crystallizations of thought forms, belief systems and penetrate the subconscious mind and release these blockages, even physical blockages.

According to Karina, “everything that has happened to you in your life culminates in the tone and the pitch of your voice and 80 percent of what we say is delivered by the tone of the voice.” Therefore, the tone of our voice is more important than the actual words we use to communicate. Words may lie, but the tone reflects our true intention whether it is expressed or suppressed. The voice reveals our character and personality. Our voice remembers what we have forgotten through conscious or unconscious suppression of our painful memories/experiences.

This is because our emotions are contained in the vibration of our voice. When we listen to a person’s voice it may attract, repel, manipulate or give us a feeling of release or excitement and we respond to it on an intuitive, emotional level. The voice tells us where we are at, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

Sound shapes the universe as sound is a vibration, a frequency, and we now know from quantum physics that the whole universe is made up of energy fields and technically vibrational fields of energy. Therefore, everything in the universe is made up of vibrations including our physical bodies. What is sound? Sound is a vibration, a specific frequency.

As Pythagoras said, “A stone is frozen music”.

Pythagoras (c. 580–500 B.C.), a very wise teacher of ancient Greece, knew how to work with sound. He taught his students how certain musical chords and melodies produce definite responses within the human organism. He demonstrated that the right sequence of sounds, played musically on an instrument, can change behavior patterns and accelerate the healing process.

Let’s have a look at some recent science that supports this view.

According to CBC News of Friday, March 9, 2007
(http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/03/09/science-nervessound-20070309.html#skip300x250), our nerves do not transmit electricity as we were taught to believe, they in fact transmit sound. “The common view that nerves transmit impulses through electricity is wrong and they really transmit sound”, according to a team of Danish scientists.
The Copenhagen University researchers argue that biology and medical textbooks that say nerves relay electrical impulses from the brain to the rest of the body are incorrect.

“For us as physicists, this cannot be the explanation,” said Thomas Heimburg, an associate professor at the university’s Niels Bohr Institute. “The physical laws of thermodynamics tell us that electrical impulses must produce heat as they travel along the nerve, but experiments find that no such heat is produced.”

Heimburg, an expert in biophysics who received his PhD from the Max Planck Institute in Goettingen, Germany – where biologists and physicists often work together in a rare arrangement – developed the theory with Copenhagen University’s Andrew Jackson, an expert in theoretical physics.

According to the traditional explanation of molecular biology, an electrical pulse is sent from one end of the nerve to the other with the help of electrically charged salts that pass through ion channels and a membrane that sheathes (protects) the nerves. That membrane is made up of lipids and proteins.

Heimburg and Jackson explain that sound propagation is a much more likely explanation. Although sound waves usually weaken as they spread out, a medium with the right physical properties could create a special kind of sound pulse or “soliton” that can propagate without spreading or losing strength.

The physicists say because the nerve membrane is made of a material similar to olive oil that can change from liquid to solid through temperature variations, they can freeze and propagate the solutions.”

In summary, this research states that we transmit sound, not electrical impulses, as a means of communicating with our organs and glands. Yet, this is not an entirely new body of evidence. In the 1960’s a Swiss scientist Dr. Hans Jenny, demonstrated how sound shapes matter.

Dr Jenny placed sand granules on to a metal plate and then played a few bars of notes from composers such as Mozart and Bach. The sand granules formed constant shapes to the vibration of the sound, and extraordinary patterns were observed.

Jenny then went further with his observation, saying that sound has a direct influence on our human biology and thus influences our health. This is because every cell in our body has its own vibrational frequency. Human cells are composed of atoms and molecules that resonate according to their mutual harmonies. Many cells together form tissues and organs that are part of a biological system. This system then vibrates according to new harmonies.

So, from these researches we can say that sound sculpts us. All out tissues, organs, bones and cells are made up of sound. We are held together by sound as each part of our body has its own sonic frequencies which travel and pulsate like a wave, in an inhaling and exhaling breath.

In practical terms then, any part of the person that is out of balance, having headaches or back pain, weight problems or fatigue, emotional, mental or spiritual problems, can respond to healing with sound.

Scientist Fabien Maman has done extensive research in music and sound and has proven that the voice has the ability to bring us into what he calls our crystal-clear self. In Hindu tradition, all things have their own hidden and secret sound. Our voice is as unique as our fingerprints… Our voice has a soul print that we have been trying to come into contact with since birth. Our voice signifies our whole story, our make as well as our origins.

As emotions affect our body’s chemical structure, we are called to learn how to balance our emotional body by using our own voice as a self-healing modality. Dissonant sounds, for example are an excellent conductor for bringing us into contact with the emotional body, as well as releasing any false beliefs and negative programming. When we expand our vocal range we are also expanding our view of life and we are transcending our self-imposed limiting beliefs about experience our true Self.

What is the Soul Voice Method?

The human voice is one of the most powerful tools available to humankind. Every word we speak carries the tone of our sound as an instrument of communication and selfhealing. Understanding how to tune and use this instrument effectively shifts not only our own consciousness, but also that of those who receive (hear) our sounds.

Sound healing is an ancient healing tool. Sound has the ability to penetrate the cells of the body, the conscious and the unconscious mind, the seen and the unseen. It can travel across space and time. Sound is powerful, yet gentle and effective and has the power to correct any condition, because it is a vibration.

“There is a longing in human beings today to fully open up the throat chakra,” says Karina, “to communicate the truth and come into mastery of self-expression. There is a cry, a call deep within our hearts that wants to be heard. There is a longing for the liberation of the voice and soul – in this way re-discovering the grandeur of who we truly are – a force of the highest vibration and creation.”

Karina confirms what many psychologists say, that the emotional shutdowns we carry in the throat are huge. Our grief and anger for example, that are not expressed, causes illnesses and blockages. If we are able to release it by using our voice, we are in fact, releasing that pain and blockage in our body.

As a clinical kinesiologist I work with people that have chronic back pain, hip, neck and shoulder injuries. I felt inspired to use the Soul Voice process on a client who has lived with ongoing hip problems for over 20 years.

Guiding her to release only the sounds that felt natural and effortless to her and using my own voice along with her, she went into a form of wailing as a little girl of 5 years old would, as though she was left all alone in the darkness of the woods. It was incredible to witness how this woman’s voice which is so controlled and poised most of the time, took her to the core of her hip pain as well as under active thyroid.

The intense suppressed grief which her inner child held for all these years was the key to finally release this emotional block that caused pain and muscle tension in her hip. After some minutes of integration, she felt a distinct adjustment take place within her pelvic region and the pain subsided. Some people might see this as a miracle; I would see it as accessing our truth with the power of our own voice.

In essence, sound is a powerful tool for healing and transformation, and it is much more powerful and effective when we are using our very own voice instead of to just listening to CD’s alone. When we use our own voice, we are accessing our direct source of power, our suppressed emotions and the essence of our soul. This happens a lot quicker then listening to music or someone else’s voice, as our voice contains everything about us. Using other people voices or sounds, as therapeutic as it may be, would not have the same organic effect.

Our voice reflects all parts of our being including our soul. For this reason, it is a priceless tool for anyone who wants to experience their true self and live an inspired life. Using our voice in this way makes us better at communicating, clearer, happier, more alive and more present in our life. It touches us in places we haven’t visited before, as the voice also contains our untapped potentials.

Our voice is our natural source of power and liberation because it helps us to remember and recognise our true nature in the struggle of our human experience. Our voice longs to be explored with trust, love and acceptance of what we are here to experience in our life.